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NEW DELHI. — Police in southern India have arrested seven people, including four students, and charged them with defaming the country’s new prime minister in a college magazine, officials said yesterday.The arrests came after an annual student magazine at the Government Polytechnic College in Kerala state included a photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a collage of what it called “negative faces”.
Others included in the collage were Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden and former US president George W Bush.
The seven were arrested on Wednesday and charged with defamation and criminal conspiracy, said district police chief N Vijaya Kumar.
They were released on bail on Thursday. If found guilty, they could face prison terms and stiff fines.
The four students helped edit the magazine. The others who were arrested included the college’s top official, the magazine’s faculty adviser and the owner of the company that printed the publication.
Police seized a printing press and computers used to design the magazine. The college said no further copies of the publication would be distributed, according to Kumar.
“They were arrested under several charges, including defamation, intentional insult to provoke breach of peace, criminal conspiracy and printing matter known to be defamatory,” he said.
Police made the arrests after Yuva Morcha, or Youth Front, a group affiliated with Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, complained about the photo.
The college’s student union publishes the magazine each year based on a theme. This year’s issue, which was distributed last week, explained world history through pictures of faces.
Modi, who was sworn in as prime minister in May, was chief minister of the western Indian state of Gujarat when it was ripped by sectarian violence in 2002.
In November 2012, two 21-year-old college students were arrested in Mumbai for posting a comment on Facebook criticising the shutdown of India’s financial hub for the funeral of a powerful right-wing politician. — AP
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